I feel nostalgia welling up inside, ready to burst out. There is sadness and melancholy and what’s next, and I just don’t know. I have my lists of things to do. It is only March, and that’s good. The kick in the butt is good because it is still early in the year and I can get it done. Well, get it started. I just need to be unafraid. Not an easy task. I don’t want things as they were, though; I want them better. Is that even possible?

I don’t know why, but right now I’m thinking of McDonald’s fries. When I was a kid, my Dad would drive way out to Queens to get McDonald’s for dinner. (Believe it or not, but McDonald’s wasn’t on every street corner.) So we’d drive out to Queens and whoever went with him got to sneak some fries. Mainly, he’d ask for one, and the person holding the bag would pass him a couple of fries and then take a couple.

All the way home.

They were so hot. I almost always burned my mouth. By the time we got home, one of the fries were completely or almost completely gone.

We started buying an extra order of fries for the ride home, so no one was mad at us when we got there.

Even today, eating a cheeseburger or a Quarter Pounder makes me remember those moments as a kid with my Dad eating fries. It is not lost on me that it isn’t when I eat the fries, and it is only those two burgers. They taste exactly the same as they did back then.